National University — Attraction in Chula Vista

Update: June 19, 2015 Dear Diary~ It's Friday-No return call. This morning, I've been playing on the NUVHS website. Walah! I was just able to get to the next level! You gamers out there have nothing on me when it comes to enrolling my son into this virtual high school. It's only taken me a week! Well 2 weeks if you count all the non-computer time I've spent. Here's a hint, once you're able to get past the gatekeeper aka the application process, you will receive a student id in a separate email. Once you have that prized possession, you must click on the link provided in the same email. Mine didn't work for a week, just saying. Finally I was able to get in a few moments ago. Once the link works, you enter your student id and password. On the left side you should see a link "Complete NUVHS application". That was a piece of cake until I had to pay the non-refundable $60 which I assume is to go towards all the fun of this registration process. Yeah, kind of like a theme park where you pay and stand in line for hours for a quick 3 minute ride. Anyways, let's get back to the fun. So this level had me stumped for a bit. I had trouble on my Mac and could not pay so I decided to cheat and move over to my windows machine. Once I switched, it was easy to make the payment. Now, while I waited for someone to call for the highly anticipated interview, I thought I'd "save" more time and work on the next challenge- the Transferability Verification form. Yes, these sneaky peeps are not going to make it easy for you! Beware, they try to trick you by saying on the Apply Now webpg "Be sure to complete the Course Transferability Verification Form included in the application process." So you would think that some time during the online application process there would be a link to this form, right? Wrong!! These little devils are good! They know you love to game and have loads of extra time to waste so they "hide" this form in the "Download the Application Packet" on the upper right corner of the Apply Now webpg. I now have the coveted form filled out and sent to my primary high school and am waiting a call. Waiting for the next level, bring it on!

Original Review: I have found this to be a necessary evil. You see for the past 2 weeks I've been trying to get information in addition to enrolling my son for summer school. Now, unfortunately, I'm not enrolling my son because I want him to advance or graduate early. He had a difficult time with a class and I want to make sure he is prepared for the coming year. You know, fill in any gaps he may be missing. We only have a limited time of summer before school begins. Of the list of virtual high schools, this is the only one which offers the class he needs. Thus all my persistence in contacting this school. I called and waited for the "48 hours" for a call back. I did speak with someone who told me I needed more info from my son's school. He is not a student of National University Virtual High School. So I gathered the info, then I called back and waited again. I was able to begin the online application and received a student number. That was as far as I could get online. I could not figure out how to enroll him in a class. That was on over the weekend and though I'd call in on Monday armed with the student number and be all enrolled by that evening. I thought for sure by Tuesday we would begin classes. It is Wednesday, I've left messages both on Monday and Tuesday because I cannot enroll him into classes. Since I work, I missed the call on Tuesday while I was with a client. So I did the only thing I could do, call and leave another message and am now waiting for another "24-48 hours". UGGG! This is so frustrating! What is the hold up? Are they short on staff? Really? Another follow up call an hour or two later, since I missed the first one, would have been greatly appreciated. I would appreciate their effort in trying to contact me again the same day. Instead, I'm just back to the end of the line again. Or at least...

DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT SIGN UP FOR CLASSES AT NUVHS. My son signed up for Spanish 3A to make up for a bad grade he got at his regular high school. We received a Welcome letter and other documentation stating we were in 3A, including a link to the course. He used the link, took the entire course, with a tutor helping him because it was so difficult and there was barely any communication from the teacher. It cost me a ton of extra money to pay for the tutor. He worked hard and received an A. When we finally received the transcript, it said he had taken 3B. I called the school and they ADMITTED THEY ENROLLED HIM IN THE WRONG CLASS - they "made an error and enrolled him into 3B." It is now October of his senior year - after repeated calls, explaining the story over and over, I had to demand to speak to the Director of the school, Darren Smith. I told him my son didn't need 3B, he needed 3A, that's what we signed up for, that's what we paid for. THIS IDIOT kept repeating the same thing, "I can refund your $, and he can take 3A now for free." REALLY?? My son has a full load now, the reason we signed up for summer school is we had time then. AND BY THE WAY, WE SIGNED UP FOR 3A to begin with - you enrolled him in a class that he doesn't need - and he wasted his entire summer taking it. This A in Spanish 3A would have raised our son's GPA by .7. Instead we have an A in a class we don't need. And now he's offering to let us take the class we wanted 3 months ago, FROM THEM??? This place is THE WORST. Worst customer service, worst communication, and a huge rip off. The director is a total jerk, and he's teaching his employees to read from the same script - literally the same robotic and useless words.

HERE ARE SOME GREAT ALTERNATIVES: Pacific Coast High School (offers online summer school for free and a live person answers the phone every time), Beach Cities Learning Center (BCLC-online), Apex and BYU. We have heard great things about all the other schools and taken classes from PCHS, BCLC. They were SO MUCH BETTER than NUHVS.

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR CLASSES AT NUVHS. You...

I found that the format of this course made it very convenient to be able to learn the material to my fullest extent. I felt that it made it effortless to manipulate the material in more ways than one. By that, I mean that the course provided a strong minimum amount of content, and to engage in it more, I took my own notes by hand and reviewed them as if I was studying for a class in school. I’m glad that the class didn’t force notetaking because I think I would have felt less motivation to do so when it’s an assignment. I liked the freedom that the class allowed. The set-up of the class was very intuitive and provided clear instructions.

As far as the material, I found that it was something really interesting to me and kept me wanting to come back to learn more. For that, I give major brownie points to National University for providing as many class options as they did. I was so glad that I was able to choose a course that I found genuinely interesting because it made it feel much less like a chore to do, as much of regular school often feels. I took AP Psychology at my regular school this year, and there were some things that were covered in Personal Psychology II that weren’t covered in AP Psychology! Since I decided to major in Psychology in college, I’m so grateful that I’ve had even more exposure to psychology material and can hopefully use what I’ve learned to supplement my collegiate psychology education.

I loved the way the assessments were formatted. I found that the questions were challenging enough to provoke high level thinking, but not so challenging that it became stressful.

Overall, I think this was a great course to take and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to take it. If I had known about National University earlier in my academic career, I feel that I would definitely have taken more classes along with my regular high...